as yet possess
sprang the first rude forms of English justice. Each kinsman was his
kinsman's keeper, bound to protect him from wrong, to hinder him from
wrong-doing, and to suffer with him and pay for him if wrong were done.
So fully was this principle recognized that even if any man was charged
before his fellow-tribesmen with crime his kinsfolk still remained in
fact his sole judges; for it was by their solemn oath of his innocence or
his guilt that he had to stand or fall.

[Sidenote: The Land]

As the blood-bond gave its first form to English justice, so it gave
their first forms to English society and English warfare. Kinsmen fought
side by side in the hour of battle, and the feelings of honour and
discipline which held the host together were drawn from the common duty
of every man in each little group of warriors to his house. And as they
fought side by side on the field, so they dwelled side by side on the
soil. Harling abode by Harling, and Billing by Billing; and each "wick"
or "ham" or "stead" or "tun" took its name from the kinsmen who dwelled
together in it. In this way the home or "ham" of the Billings was
Billingham, and the "tun" or township of the Harlings was Harlington. But
in such settlements the tie of blood was widened into the larger tie of
land. Land with the German race seems at a very early time to have become
everywhere the accompaniment of full freedom. The freeman was strictly
the free-holder, and the exercise of his full rights as a free member of
the community to which he belonged became inseparable from the possession
of his "holding" in it. But property had not as yet reached that stage of
absolutely personal possession which the social philosophy of a later
time falsely regarded as its earliest state. The woodland and
pasture-land of an English village were still undivided, and every free
villager had the right of turning into it his cattle or swine. The
meadow-land lay in like manner open and undivided from hay-harvest to
spring. It was only when grass began to grow afresh that the common
meadow was fenced off into grass-fields, one for each household in the
village; and when hay-harvest was over fence and division were at an end
again. The plough-land alone was permanently allotted in equal shares
both of corn-land and fallow-land to the families of the freemen, though
even the plough-land was; subject to fresh division as the number of
claimants grew greater or less.

[Sideno